Saudi billet imports up on local deficit

摘要

The recent acceleration of government-funded construction projects in Saudi Arabia has given a significant boost to end-user steel consumption, and led to an increase in output at many of the kingdom's long product re-rollers. Because of the gap between domestic billet and finished product capacity, rolling mills resorted to importing more billet from Turkey in January. Construction activity funded by the government's 130 billion dollars plan, announced last year, is starting to gather pace and expected to help maintain healthy steel demand until at least 2015.